I think there is a direct and worrisome link between farmland preservation policies in Ontario and British Columbia and the ridiculous real estate bubbles.
It is surely ridiculous that average three-bedroom bungalows that are more than 30 or 40 years old are selling for $1.5 million.
Surely one aspect of this bubble is the lack of houses. And part of the reason is that developers and municipalities are unable, because of provincial legislation, to build housing within reasonable commuting distance of jobs for homeowners.
In Toronto it's a huge greenbelt. In Vancouver it is the agricultural reserve that exists over the entire Fraser Valley farmland.
There is a foolish belief that Canada is short of prime farmland. Nonsense! There is a shortage of profits large enough to make farming land competitive with housing and other urban development.
Preservation of farmland is not the only factor in the housing shortage. Adequate transportation is another. If there were reliable, affordable and rapid transportation options available. people would be willing to search for housing outside the bubble areas.
Attempts to legislate caps on housing prices are probably necessary and wise in the short term because a collapse of these bubbles would be devastating to the entire Canadian economy. This is, of course, what is motivating politicians to adopt higher taxes on vacant properties and on foreign buyers.
But the underlying reasons, which have been decades in the making, are restrictions on housing development and transportation infrastructure.
Moreover, farmland preservation policies have had no discernible impact on food security and certainly not on farm incomes.
